He's really good at creating efficient testing methods, to discover how the batteries are going to perform, but he doesn't fully understand why.
It seems to me a chemist/physisist would know exactly what is occurring in the battery, what changes will happen over time, and has already run definitive computer simulations for actual battery lifetimes and degradation.
I doubt it. No doubt the battery companies have ideas and theories, but with five additives to an already complex electrolyte, no chemist or physicist can know how it will perform under different conditions. Which is why they run experiments. If you give a chemist a collection of complex compounds and ask them what happens when you mix them, they will give you a good guess. But they won't know for sure until they test it. And they sure won't know what happens to the mixture in eight years after complex temperature and reaction cycling.
The reason why this presentation is so interesting is that he has come up with a way to predict long term battery life without having to run an eight year long experiment. As he shows right at the beginning, most battery companies do quick cycle tests, which are not useful to predict long term battery life. This is yet another reason why when you see a random researcher/battery company tout their latest breakthrough, it really doesn't mean much. This kind of testing is what is required - using sensitive equipment and procedures to five decimal places. And I'm really glad Tesla hired a PHD from this guy's lab so that they could do their own testing.
Obviously the battery company he was working with in testing additives, had a trick up their sleeve with their 5th additive, and knew what they're creating to get a 20x improvement.
Where are these scientists?
Why is this so secretive, even now?
Because it isn't an academic lab. The battery company has developed proprietary (secret) additives which it will use to create their next wonder battery, but they have zero reason to tell the world how they did it. Academic labs are great for inventing new ideas, but when those ideas become economically useful, then those researchers typically migrate to a for-profit company. There they tap the equity markets to raise tons more money than they ever could have had in academia, hire more PHDs, and really stretch out the boundaries of their science. Unfortunately that science then becomes proprietary. It eventually makes it out to the wider world as scientists and engineers go work for other companies, etc.
I suspect a lot. Tesla is actively creating new battery chemistries in house in concert with other patent and technology holders.
If you were to value Tesla as a company, you should realize that it has batteries that no one else has, and will make even better batteries than everybody else. It has a motor/inverter package that no one else has and will continue to have the best motor/inverter for quite some time. It has lower manufacturing costs that its competitors. It has a Supercharger network that no one else has and will continue to have this unique advantage that no one else has. Tesla really is the next Apple/Microsoft/whatever. Only bigger and with more proprietary technology
